Intangible work is HARD work

It’s amazing to me how tiring intangible work like mental, emotional, and spiritual progress can be. After I finished yesterday’s post, I set a goal to spend as much time as I could in the studio before my sweetie got home from work at 6:30. Nothing else required, just spend time there and work to heal my artistic wounds by relearning how to be comfortable with my art. I folded laundry, read a magazine, thought, wrote down ideas, tidied up. By the end of the day I was exhausted; I sat on the couch, wrapped up in my favorite blanket, and cried. It wasn’t even a sad cry exactly, I just needed the emotional release. Later, after dinner, I took a cue from SARK and took a much-needed nap.

Despite how draining it is, it’s important work. I plan to continue to spend as much time in my studio as I can. It’s a little like telling a child who can’t fall asleep “Go to bed. You don’t have to sleep, you just have to rest.” You know that if they do, sleep will eventually follow. I don’t have to make art, I just have to get comfortable with being in my studio. Art will follow.

Intangible work involves fighting a daily war against the Ghosts of Criticisms past. Just thinking about creating art with the same kind of abandon as I did in high school makes a thousand whiny, critical voices in my head rear up with objections like “But what would you DO with all that artwork?” Our world is all about the tangible, the monetary, the useful. So the idea of churning out page after page of artwork seems hideously indulgent to my societal training. To the question “What would you do with all that art?” I am learning to shout back, “I WILL HEAL!” (And if the Ghosts still demand something more “sensible” I can tell them that I will give it away as gifts or sell it on Etsy.)

It seems that as the new year approaches, I’m not the only one thinking about the challenge of starting. After posting yesterday, I curled up with the latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and was delighted to find Nic Hohn’s article “Action is the Art of Doing”, which dealt with just the sort of issues I explored yesterday. The practical suggestions Nic offers only reinforce the idea that journalling could be a very productive tool for me. Later on, I was exploring SARK’s book Living Juicy: Daily Morsels for Your Creative Soul, which is set up to optionally be read one page per day, and found that the topic of the first week of pages is Procrastination. Is it the time of year to think about these things, or is it serendipity?

The image in this post is a painting I did in high school or middle school, that I finally got around to hanging today. Click on it to view a bigger version on Flickr.

Steampunk mail day!

I had company over yesterday, so I ended up not getting an art made. But I did have quite a mail day! I’ve made a few purchases on eBay and Amazon lately, and a bunch of things came at once. As you can see from the picture, it was something of a steampunk mail day. I got a marvelous antique book full of patent illustrations, as well as two REALLY cool paper punches – a gear and a pair of watch hands. These are so amazing, I had to try them out right away on some copper embossed paper and some black silver-speckled paper. The results are amazing, I can’t wait to use them!

I got the steampunky punches as part of a large lot from eBay – I’m trying to beef up my collection in time for an activity I’m hosting at the NEATC Retreat. We’re calling it the Punchin’ Luncheon and the idea is that we all bring our punches and some paper and share the wealth. There will be cupcakes and punch, and we’ll all come home with a nice stash of awesome paper shapes.

I got a couple of books yesterday as well, but I’ll talk about those another time, when I’ve had a chance to look them over a bit. Right now I gotta run, I have a driving lesson in twenty minutes – I’m in my mid-twenties and I’m finally learning to drive!